Lessons of Love

I am in love with love. I have searched for it my whole life and no matter how many times I've bashed my nose up from it, I would continue to seek for it.

In my younger years I would go to limits of love that would expose my heart so drastically that I would forget who I was. This just doesn't mean with a man but even sometimes this would happen with friends and family. This has been one of the greatest lessons of life. Love is tricky; it is a dance of the heart, openness to vulnerability, an allowing of letting one in, inside your heart.

Through trusting myself and getting to know myself better was when I truly learned about love. Growing older is this marvelous gift of wisdom, but it takes hard work. Once I learned about loving me was then when I learned about honouring oneself. I had to go back to the beginning to learn about love. And it started at a Buddhist temple in Detroit, with that came going back to the greatest texts, The Bible, The Yoga Sutras, anything writing by Thich Nhat Hanh, even a book like Eat, Pray, Love, the amount of books I consumed on love and still read to remind myself continuously. All these teachers in my life showing me the ways of love.

 You see, I realized that I had this ability to see the good in all people, even the ones that weren't the best for me. One day, I was at a workshop listening to my yoga teacher Seane Corn, and she said the simplest phrase, "send everyone love, be kind, but you don't have to go to lunch with them!" This statement was magnificent to me. As I practice and teach yoga full-time this teaching rolls around my head again and again, the simplest of teachings but the most profound, to me.

 I've had to go back to this teaching again and again. Not everyone see's love the same way. We can love from a distance, and sometimes that means separation from a not so healthy person, or an abuser, or a manipulator, or a mean person, or an energy sucker, unhealthy workplace, the list can go on and on. We all have work to do. The teacher shows up, and it is up to us to listen to the message. But it is up to us when we want the seed to take root. To love oneself, to value oneself, to honour oneself. One of the hardest most beautiful lessons I've even learned. Thank you to all the teachers that keep showing up to help me learn this lesson.